the federal agency formerly known as HCFA? If you said “CMMS” you
would officially be wrong (but see, One Look’s Acronym Finder). Instead,
you’ll find a “CMS” logo throughout the Centers’ website.
If you don’t believe the logo, “CMS” has made it easy to check further –there’s a link in the Side Bar to an Acronyms Page, which offers a search engine
that features both simple and advanced acronym searches.
No kidding: A search engine just for relevant acronyms. Plus, another webpage
Warning: Due to the size of the acronym list, you may experience a
long delay if you choose to view All Letters. We recommend limiting
your view to a particular letter. Alternatively, you can perform an
Plug <CMMS> into the agency’s acronym search engine, and you are told “No
acronyms were found.” Try <CMS> and you’re told “Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services.” That’s pretty definitive — only One M.
Well, this enquiringEsq wants to know why there’s a missing “m”. The agency … 
…
itself defines an acronym as “a term formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the
major parts of a compound term.” So, which part of their mission isn’t major — Medicare
or Medicaid? Why has an em been removed? [Please do not confuse this with the "em" that
Is history a guide, or is politics? HCFA — the Health Care Financing Administration —
was renamed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and dubbed “CMS” on
July 1, 2001. Now that’s just a few months into the first GWBush administration.
Either the Bushies or the Clintonites might be responsible for this acronymic abomination.
We offer some theories:
Clinton’s folk wanted to really confuse the Bush people, so they
rather than the set that is shared with just 8 of them – one of which
has an empowering aura of diversity (Center for Multilingual Multicultural
Studies ).
The gamer son of a Bush transition team member told his dad that “cms”
is the name of an angel, so choosing CMS would please the religious right.
His Clinton transition counterpart was happy to accept
this truncated acronym, as her goth daughter had done
a paper on cms, and knew both that the angel is an evil
cacodemon, and that cacodemonia is a form of insanity in
psychology,where the patient believes he is possessed by
an evil spirit. Angel indeed.
One other possible scenario: OMB had issued a directive to
HCFA in 2000, saying that every portion of the agency’s overhead must
be reduced by 25% for 2001. The logo and website transition teams thought
OMB had said “masthead”. Since everybody outside of the Beltway
keeps confusing Medicare and Medicaid anyway, they figured one of the
“m’s” could safely be eliminated without angering the constituency of either
program, or even choosing which would suffer the acronyn axing.
You are welcome to do your own journalistic thing and help solve the mystery of
the missing m. Someone’s got some ’splainin’ to do.
p.s. How did we get started down this treacherous path? After hearing
today on how the new Medicare prescription benefits program would
affect persons who are also on Medicaid (the “dual eligibles”). I eventually
ended up at the so-called CMS website. In truth, I could not figure out how
to locate the info on the CMS site. A Google search helped me find this page
at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which lists how the prescription program will
affect poor persons at various levels of income. For those not receiving low-
despite appearances to the contrary, my day was not totally wasted.
“I have no idea why “Centers” is plural. Do you?
- originally posted March 31, 2005 - 